


However Ungrateful

by TheEntireFangirl



Series: Mayor Agreste AU [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Episode: s01 Origines | Origins Parts 1-2, F/M, Umbrella Scene (Miraculous Ladybug), Vigilante AU, i'm putting this under a series but i make NO PROMISES, mayor agreste au, no beta we die like emilie, no miraculous ladybugs (damage done by akumas is permanent)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 10:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30003657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEntireFangirl/pseuds/TheEntireFangirl
Summary: Mayor Gabriel Agreste has quickly taken up allyship with Paris’s newest quasi-hero, Hawk Moth. To the standard citizen, this looks like a good decision—after all, who else will fight against the tyranny of the Guardian, a mysterious figure who threatens the whole world with unspeakable power?Marinette Dupain-Cheng would be happy to believe this, same as any other citizen of Paris. But when she’s presented with magical earrings and an alternative viewpoint to who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, she gets caught in the middle. Unwilling to let the Miraculous fall into the wrong hands and unable to tell whose hands are wrong, she finds herself deemed a vigilante as she navigates between the status quo and the path of righteousness, between her greatest political enemy’s son and her mysterious partner.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Nino Lahiffe, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: Mayor Agreste AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2207112
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

Marinette threw herself back when she opened the box, pressing herself against the small table in the corner of her room. “A giant bug! A—a mouse! A bug mouse!”

Whatever it was floated in the middle of the air, red and clearly not natural. It spoke out in a squeaky little voice, “Everything’s okay! Don’t be scared!”

A voice cut through the air from below them, causing everything to still. “Marinette, get down here. There’s something on the news that you should see.”

The air stood thick between them, and hoarsely, Marinette called, “I’ll be down in a minute.” She didn’t take her eyes off the creature.

It floated to her. “I’m a kwami. I give you powers, if you choose to wear the Miraculous and accept them. I can help you become a superhero.”

Marinette’s eyes widened. She grabbed a cup which sat on the counter behind her and put it over the kwami.

“Whatever makes you feel safer,” it said. Carefully, slowly, without turning away, she opened the hatch on her floor and climbed down, joining her parents in the living room. This was odd—the bakery was left unmanned.

Live video footage on the local news played, showing a man talking over the city. He had a gray and purple super suit, like one of the American superheroes—it covered his face. He looked quite horrendous, but the screen read _New hero to protect Paris!_

“...to protect you from a new threat that the city faces. A so-called ‘Guardian’ walks among you, hiding the ultimate power of the universe. It is far too powerful for any one person to wield, and I plan on taking this power back and giving it to the people, as it should be.

“The ‘Guardian’ may send agents after me, wielding the Miraculous, special jewels to give them power. I will have champions to stop these menace and get their Miraculous before they can destroy the world.”

The camera lingered on his face for a moment more, zooming out to show he was standing on a rooftop—then he jumped away, out of sight from the cameras.

It panned to a reporter who began talking, faster than what was comfortably understandable. Marinette ran upstairs to get to that thing—the kwami—whatever it was called. It was an agent of evil, wasn’t it? She looked at the cup but found it empty.

“This is bad!” It spoke up from behind her and she jumped away from it, knocking over the cup. Scooting on her butt, she quickly put distance between herself and it. The Miraculous—earrings—were left on the floor, more toward the kwami than her.

“You’re—you’re from the Guardian!” she said. “I have to give those to the police!”

“Marinette, no!” it said, flying up to her face. “You don’t understand. That’s the man who stole a Miraculous from the Guardian. He’s the one who’s evil. The Guardian is sworn to protect the Miraculous. Who knows what he’ll do?”

“Why should I believe you!” she shrieked.

It remained silent, pivoting around the room for something. When it found nothing, it turned back to her.

“The two most powerful Miraculous can be merged to wield the ultimate power of the universe and be granted a wish at a terrible price. One of them is the Ladybug Earrings, which you’ve just been given. The other is the Cat Ring, which was given to someone else. If the Guardian wanted to wield the power, why would he give them away? And to two people who aren’t allowed to know each other’s identities?”

The air was still, but Marinette said nothing. If what the kwami said was true, then that was a big gap in this hero’s story. But it could just as easily be lying.

“How do I know it’s not the hero’s Miraculous which is needed to wield the power of the Miraculous?”

It sighed. “Do you believe that you’re evil?” it asked, coming up to her face, to the point where she could even smell its breath. It smelled sweet, like a cake.

“No,” she whispered.

“Why would the Guardian give the Miraculous to someone who’s not evil?”

“Because he’s lying to me?” Still, she didn’t put her heart into it—it was a question, not a definitive statement.

“Why do you believe the Guardian’s lying to you and Hawk Moth isn’t?”

They paused. Marinette stood up, walking over to the small hexagonal box and picking it up.

“If I did believe you—which I’m not saying I do—how would these work?”

It rushed over to her. “You have to wear the earrings and say, ‘Tikki, spots on!’”

“Is that your name? Tikki?”

She nodded, taking them out of the box and stepping up to the mirror, carefully putting them in her ears. Immediately, they flashed from red and black dots to plain black—they truly are magic.

“I don’t know what’s going on yet, but I may very well turn these over to the police.”

Tikki closed her big indigo eyes. “I hope you won’t do that, Marinette. But first at least meet your partner.”

“What are my powers?” she asked.

“You can call out for your Lucky Charm and use it to fix whatever’s going on. It’ll be like a puzzle piece, a perfect tool for whatever you need. Once you’re done with it, it’ll be used to fix whatever your partner destroyed. That’s their power, destruction.”

“Tikki?”

“Yes?”

“If what you’re saying is true and it’s actually Hawk Moth that’s evil, what would happen if he won?”

“I’m not sure. Whatever happens will have the ultimate price, but since it’s never happened before, we don’t know what that is. Just that it’ll be detrimental to humanity.”

She nodded, calling out, “Tikki, spots on!”

* * *

Bounding across the rooftops, Chat Noir felt free.

Mostly, though, he just wanted to find his partner. Maybe that would clear things up—because clearly something weird was going on.

He noticed, though, the way people were staring at him, pointing, whispering, filming.

They thought he was a villain. He understood why. Part of him wanted to agree.

Maybe that was why he was immediately skeptical—it was the same part of him which always wanted to say yes to his father, the one that sat back in the car that morning and didn’t go to school.

When he realized that people calling on their phones were calling the police, Chat Noir retreated into the shadows. A nook on a building hid him well enough, and he caught his breath considering what to do, how to find his partner.

For a moment, he examined his staff. If he held the button on it, it grew, clearly magical in nature as it never stopped getting longer and never got too heavy. If he pressed the button—

A screen appeared.

_Call._

_Contact List:_

_Ladybug Miraculous Holder._

That must be his partner, then.

He hit the button.

It only rang once before they answered.

“...hello?” he asked.

A sigh sounded. “You must be my partner.”

“And you are?” he asked, smiling already. Finally, someone who was on the same page as him.

“Um—I’m—Ladybug.”

“Well, Ladybug, nice to meet you. I’m Chat Noir.”

“Did you see that new hero?”

“Hawk Moth?”

“Was that his name? I missed the beginning of the broadcast.”

“We should talk. Where are you?”

“I—I’m not somewhere we can meet. You?”

“A random building on a random street.”

Ladybug didn’t say anything else. Chat Noir imagined they were thinking the same things: _If we meet in public, we’ll be arrested. If we don’t both know where we’re going, we’ll never be able to meet_.

“Okay, I’m gonna find a random building to camp out on then I’ll text you the address. I assume we can text on these things—I don’t know. We need to figure this out.”

“Agreed.”

Ladybug hung up, and Chat Noir hung out for a while more until he received the message.

* * *

Ladybug found a suitable place to meet with her partner and messaged the address—they could text, thank God.

And then she waited.

Chat Noir came after a while, joining her in the small nook she’d found—on three sides, they were protected by the buildings which rose higher than the one they stood on. On the other side, they were protected by a clothesline hung with big sheets.

Dipping gracefully in, her partner met her with a bow. “Pleased to meet you.”

She carefully stepped away from him. “I don’t even know if I trust you yet. Just... let’s talk. I’m Ladybug.”

“Chat Noir.”

“Your pronouns?”

“What?”

“Like, should I call you he? They?”

“Uh, he. You?”

“She/her.”

“And you got a Miraculous today?”

“Which you’d know if you were working for the Guardian.”

If what Tikki said was true, then he got his Miraculous at the same time as her and he knew as much as she did. If what Hawk Moth said was true, then he could be working with the Guardian to confuse her.

She would guard the earrings just in case.

“I can see you’re skeptical of this, then.”

“You’re not?”

He met her eyes, his face conflicted, genuine. “I have a feeling. I don’t like Hawk Moth, and I can’t imagine there’s a conspiracy which involves getting two random teenagers to do the bidding of an evil ‘Guardian.’ Why isn’t he doing this work on his own? Seems less risky.”

“Maybe he can’t,” she suggested. “Maybe he’s too sick or injured. Maybe that’s what the ultimate power is—it’ll keep him alive.”

“Wouldn’t he just use the power if he already had the Miraculous?”

She looked to the sky, anywhere but her partner’s eyes. “What if he’s lying and it’s really the Butterfly Miraculous he needs to wield the power?”

The boy stepped up to her. She finally looked to him, examining his suit. If they were villains, they didn’t look out of place. He wore all black, a jacket covering over the top half of his body. Military boots and knee pads decorated his legs, and green highlights decorated the entire thing. His face was protected by a mask going over his lips and nose, a green cat nose and whiskers taking away what would normally be intimidating and sleek. Still, if he pulled his hood over his face, he’d look like an assassin from a video game. For now, blond hair fell in his eyes, giving him a more just-rolled-out-of-bed vibe.

Her outfit was only marginally less intimidating, and only because his was all black, she knew. Most of her suit was red with black spots, but from the thigh down it was inverted, darkness broken up by dots of red. On its own, it wasn’t too bad—even cute. But over the suit she had a dark cape, again with the red spots, and a hood which she could pull up if she needed it. Her mask rested over her eyes, but it hardly made a difference—again, if she pulled the hood up, she’d give people a proper reason to be scared of her.

“You’re overthinking this,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going on, but if we assume that Hawk Moth is the good guy and we’re wrong, it’s over. As it is, everything’s neutral. We can stop either side from winning just by keeping our Miraculous.”

They made heavy eye contact. Unlike her, his eyes were clearly altered by his Miraculous—the pupil, a cat eye slit; the whites gone, replaced with green.

“You’re right,” she said. “That much is true.”

He smiled at her—she couldn’t see his mouth, of course, but his eyes crinkled. It was so genuine, so obvious, that she almost matched his expression.

“We have to trust each other,” he said. “If we can’t do that, we’ll get nowhere. Okay?”

Ladybug clenched her teeth. He was probably right—if they had no allies, they had no chance of winning no matter who was right and who was wrong.

“For now we’ll wait on it, then?” she asked. “Until we have a better sense of who Hawk Moth is and what he wants. Or maybe the Guardian will approach one of us directly.”

He nodded. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.” Quickly, she threw up her yoyo, which hooked onto one of the taller buildings, and made her way down an ally.

She’d walk home, despite the distance—it was most certainly the safest option for her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason whenever I copy/paste from Google Docs into AO3's rich text editor it messes up the italics and adds a space between the end of the italics and the next part. Normally I edit this but this is a longer fic and I'm already running low on time; I might edit it later but no promises.

“So what’s  _ thiiiiiiis _ ,” Plagg asked, floating around as Adrien undressed. He wished he could answer; he’d barely listened to Nathalie explaining what the broadcast was for.

“My father’s the mayor,” he explained to the kwami. He was still skeptical—and he would be so long as Ladybug was, too—but there wasn’t much reason to hide this much. The Guardian, whoever that was, could google Adrien and find out as much. No use in hiding this.

“So you’re going to a press conference?”

“Of sorts.”

Mayor Agreste didn’t do traditional press conferences. In fact, he didn’t do much at all in the traditional way. Once upon a time, he was a popular mayor of Paris, a wonderful man with a beautiful wife and a perfect son. Then when Adrien’s mother went missing, he changed, becoming a hermit at best.

Now his numbers were on the drop but he wasn’t incompetent, so no one removed him. Adrien knew it was unlikely he’d get reelected, though.

Adrien slipped on the dress shirt and slacks that had been provided for him and slipped out of the dressing room—it would make the kwami shut up, even if he knew that it was still watching.

He wanted to believe that Plagg wasn’t lying, that he was truly a superhero. But he couldn’t stand for a cause if it genuinely was evil—

Maybe that’s why he and Ladybug were partners. He would keep her grounded from a world of indecision, and she would remind him of the consequences of rash decisions.

“Adrien, are you ready?” Nathalie asked, walking up to him. Adrien nodded, but before he could say anything Nathalie was stuffing a pen into the breast pocket of his shirt. “Perfect,” she said, her face satisfied—until her eyes passed over his collar. She reached out and fixed it, then gave him a disingenuous smile while making eye contact. “Well, now you are.”

Adrien smiled back, joining his father at the green screen where the camera was set up for the press briefing.

“Okay, time to get rolling!” Nathalie called out to everyone around. It was just Gabriel, Adrien, and two people to handle the tech thing, but no one seemed to care—they acted as though it was big production TV.

He took his chair in the background of the broadcast. Sitting up straight, he looked for something to focus on, but his mind kept wandering back to Ladybug.

She’d looked like a proper hero with her mask over her eyes—Chat Noir’s covered his face, making him feel like Kakashi Hatake only more  _ superhero  _ and less  _ anime _ . 

Of course, the dark color scheme and lack of identifiability lent itself to the supervillain image Hawk Moth was trying to paint. If the Guardian was evil, then that would be justified—but something about Hawk Moth made Adrien doubt it. The way he talked, maybe.

He became vaguely aware of the fact that the cameras were rolling, but he didn’t mind too much. Long had the day passed since he’d mastered smiling at the camera without looking without feeling.

But he had a hard time keeping his face level when some words seeped through his deep thought.

“. . . and any of his allies will be considered traitors to France.”

What?

“I’ve spoken with Hawk Moth personally and he has explained to me the nuance of the situation and what the Guardian's goals are. Though the information is too sensitive for most people, rest assured, I will do everything in my power to get back the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous.”

If Adrien’s father had spoken to Hawk Moth...

A million thoughts ran through Adrien’s head.

The live feed, showing what the green screen behind them looked like to the people watching, changed quickly from a standard boring background to include pictures caught of Ladybug and Chat Noir earlier that day.

“These are believed to be the Miraculous holders, working with and/or for the Guardian. Anyone who has information on the identities of these vigilantes should contact the police immediately. My first priority as mayor is getting back the Miraculous and securing them for the sake of the people.”

Questions began rolling in.

_ Who else has spoken to Hawk Moth? _

_ Currently, I do not know of anyone else. _

_ Why did he go to you instead of the head of the police, or the president? Is this not a matter of national security? _

_ No comment. _

_ What’s your long-term plan for working against these vigilantes? Do you trust Hawk Moth to handle it on his own? _

_ I plan to arm the police department and work  _ with _ Hawk Moth. However, as a superhero, Hawk Moth is uniquely qualified. _

None of them got to the heart of what Adrien wanted to know.

_ Why do you believe Hawk Moth? _ he should have stood up and asked.  _ What reason has he given to believe that he’s not lying, other than an expensive piece of jewelry? _

But instead of doing that, he just fidgeted with his ring.

As soon as the press conference ended, Adrien stood up and walked away.

“Where are you going?” Nathalie asked.

“Bathroom!” he said, prepared to start jogging as soon as he was out of sight. It wasn’t a total lie. He did, in fact, go to the bathroom.

Slamming the door shut behind him, he whispered,  _ “Plagg!” _

“Present!” the kwami shouted, phasing through the wall. Adrien rolled his eyes.

“I—This is bad. Should I talk to Ladybug?”

“You said you’d wait until something changed.”

It didn’t answer the question directly, but Adrien understood well enough what it meant:  _ This doesn’t change anything. You know nothing more than what you did before. _ Though the messenger wasn’t exactly the most impressive given that he was currently sniffing a bar of soap in caution, the point had been made.

Plagg took a bite out of it.

“Gross!” he said, puking it into the sink.

Adrien rolled his eyes and walked back out, redy to suffer through a bunch of adults talking to him even though he couldn’t listen.

Too much was on his mind right now.

* * *

“I can’t believe the city has a superhero! And two new villains!” Alya squealed to Marinette the next day before school began. “This is so exciting!”

“Exciting, yeah.” Marinette tried to sound enthused, but her heart wasn’t in it—how could it be? Not only was there a villain, but she didn’t know  _ who _ it was, and now she was being labelled a vigilante. The kwami in her bag was enough to get her arrested for  _ treason _ .

If it was lying, then she would be falsely accused because she  _ doesn’t _ want to help the Guardian. If Hawk Moth’s lying, then she would be falsely accused because  _ he’s _ the real villain.

She and Alya walked upstairs together to the classroom, prepared to take their seats at the front of class. Marinette was still annoyed that Chloe had stolen their seats, but it hardly seemed to matter now.

Well... She wouldn’t have thought it did.

Someone with blond hair was crouched over Marinette’s seat, doing something, but what she couldn’t tell. When she stepped up to him he stood up and it became obvious.

He put gum on her seat. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Immediately, his eyes widened in shock, then his lips pulled back. He was scared because she’d just caught him red-handed.

“Very funny,” she said, aiming it toward Chloe and Sabrina’s laughing from behind her. Crouching down to her bag, she pulled out a tissue and laid it over the gum.

“No, I was just trying to take this off!” the boy said.

“Yeah, and I imagine you’ve never met Chloe too,” she said. Quickly, the boy slunk away, sitting next to Nino across the aisle.

Alya took her seat on the other side of Marinette.

“I know I’ve seen him before,” she said, eyeing him. He had vivid green eyes and clear skin, a distinct jawline... It hit her. “Oh my God! He’s the son of the mayor!”

He’d been sitting in the background of the broadcast yesterday. He sat smiling the entire time.

“Daddy’s boy  _ and  _ Chloe’s buddy? Forget it,” Alya added.

While Marinette was still looking at him, they made eye contact for just a moment. She quickly turned her nose up at him, a refusal to give into the boy whose father was trying to paint Marinette into a supervillain.

Class started and Marinette did her best to ignore him, but her mind kept wandering back:  _ This is the boy whose father has threatened to turn me into a villain. He can’t be forgotten _ .

* * *

At lunch, Adrien followed Nino through the line, looking around at the rush of everything. It was like he’d seen on TV, only louder and less organized. Less picture perfect.

He smiled as he sat down next to Nino, slamming his lunch tray down.

“What’s up with you, bro?” Nino asked, immediately dipping his spoon into pudding. “You’re, like, giddy.”

“I’ve never been to school before. This is a dream.”

He snorted. “Weird dream to have.”

Adrien thought back to the kwami in his bag who’d said nearly the same thing that morning. Of course, it was different; Nino wasn’t possibly an agent of evil.

Well, probably.

“You’re not an agent of evil, are you?” he asked before he realized how weird that sounded.

“...no?”

“Right,” Adrien said awkwardly, kicking his bag subtly. The kwami probably wasn’t even in it given how flaky he was, but he still needed to punish the thing.

Nino began to slurp at his pudding and Adrien was just about to make something of that—his first thought was disgust and his second was elation at the idea that in this building, he was allowed to slurp his pudding—but a sound from behind them drew his attention away.

“Kim!” someone yelled. He was a big guy, and his hair was mostly buzzed, with a little tuft of blond in the front. He was standing next to another boy, this one big but in a different way—he was made of muscle. A tuft of his hair was blond, too. Was that Kim?

“Ivan, what is going on!” the lunch lady who took Adrien’s money asked.

Ivan staggered back, as though he was trying to dissolve a fight which had not yet happened. “I wasn’t—It was—”

“I don’t care,” the woman snapped. “Go to the principal’s office. Now.”

Ivan’s shoulders fell and he sulked out of the cafeteria, toward where Adrien assumed was the principal’s office.

“What was that?” Adrien asked.

“Probably just Kim being Kim.” He slurped some more pudding.

Adrien turned back to his tray and picked up his sandwich.

He didn’t take a bite for a good, long while.


	3. Chapter 3

When Marinette heard the crash, her heart started pulsing.

_ Please don’t be at the school. Please don’t be at the school. _

Some kids came screaming into the cafeteria from a classroom.

_ They’re in the school _ .

Alya had pulled away to get a video of what was going on.

_ Why does she have to be so reckless? _ Marinette thought as she ran into an abandoned hallway, opening her bag where the kwami waited.

“You have to transform!” it said.

“I—”  _ I can’t _ , she thought.  _ I can’t trust you yet _ .

“That is an akumatized person, someone Hawk Moth is using for his own gain. It doesn’t matter if you trust me, you have to help these people.”

Marinette took a breath and nodded. “Tikki, spots on!” she said.

Back into the cafeteria, everyone was in a frenzy—people were rushing for the nearest exit until they realized that the nearest exit would play right into the hands of the person who they were running from. Quickly, the reoriented, going to the next nearest hallway—which was right next to Ladybug.

A new wave of screams rose, and she realized they were at her, not the akumatized person.

“No,” she whispered. People were running from one place to another, trying to hedge their bets on the right people. Quickly, she realized that she needed to set the record straight—or else they’d keep believing that she was a villain.

A pipe on the ceiling looked sturdy enough to hold her weight. She swung her yoyo up to it, propping her legs on the wall, putting her at a 45 degree angle. Her cape was dragged downward by gravity.

“Everyone!” she yelled out, her words echoing slightly off the ceiling—she never noticed that before. Never spoke loud enough for it to happen. “I know you’re scared right now. You don’t know what’s going on, and to be honest, neither do I.” A crowd of eyes looked at her—she picked out the most important. Chloe, Alya, Nino, Adrien—it was his face she lingered on the longest. He didn’t seem scared of her, but he bounced in place, eager to escape.

“But I want to ask one question: What reason do you have to trust Hawk Moth? That he said he was the good guy? That he sent a monster after the school, endangering your lives, the property of the state?”

The more she spoke, the more she believed Tikki. What reason did she have to trust Hawk Moth? She thought of several reasons why not.

“You don’t have to trust me. But I am a person, just like you. I want to believe in the greater good. So don’t assume that I am the villain. I am navigating just like anyone else, and I will fight for you, the citizens, before I  _ ever _ fight for Hawk Moth or the Guardian.”

She saw only once she’d finished that Alya was filming—great.

“Go, go, go!” she yelled at them, pointing toward the exit. They filed out, calmer than they were before—maybe they believed her. Or at least believed she wasn’t gonna hurt them.

Last to leave was Alya and—to her surprise—Adrien.

“What’s your name?” Alya asked, nearly buzzing.

“Uh—” She faltered, but thought of Chat Noir, her meeting with him yesterday. “Ladybug,” she answered. “Now go!”

Still, Adrien didn’t leave, even as Alya scrambled out.

“I believe you,” he said. “I—I’ll never be allowed to say it because my father’s the mayor, but I believe you. I don’t trust Hawk Moth yet, either.”

Her mouth gaped, and before he could respond, he was out of the room.

* * *

“Plagg, claws out!”

Of all the things that weighed on him, none were higher up on the list than the idea that his partner could consider him a political opponent—he couldn’t live with that.

As he transformed, he was glad to know that she didn’t. At least, she probably didn’t—if she was as reasonable as he figured.

Running back out through the cafeteria, he joined her again—she was already making her way to the villain, who’d moved on from the school. “Hello!” he called out to her.

“Chat Noir, good, you’re here.”

“And you’re looking fine as ever.” The pause only lasted a second, but he couldn’t deny it was there, as he considered whether or not to call her it—he’d thought about it all last night, and now he was only more convinced that it was a good idea after seeing her speak to everyone so clearly, so confidently. “Milady.”

She looked at him out the corner of her eye and smiled slightly. “Come on Kitty, we gotta be there quick.”

He sped up, eager to get this done with.

* * *

The monster had escaped with Kim, dangling him by only his backpack.  _ Is it Ivan? _ Ladybug thought. It made sense—they’d just been in a fight and Ivan had left the cafeteria when the monster attacked.

He stopped at the Eiffel Tower, climbing it with one hand still around Kim. Ladybug and Chat Noir stopped at the base, looking up at the spire, at the overcast sky above.

“I need to destroy something on him. It’ll release the akuma and make everything go back.”

“What do you need to destroy?” Chat asked.

She squinted at the monster, trying to see. All she knew for certain is that Kim was terrified—it would have been humorous at any other time, given his incredibly big head.

“I’m not sure,” she responded. The monster didn’t have anything that could be destroyed—it was a big thing made of rock and stone and nothing else.

“Well, while you figure it out, I’ll go distract him.”

Chat Noir hopped onto his staff, beginning the slow crawl up to the top. Ladybug looked around for something, anything.

That was when she noticed the blue flashing lights coming behind her, the sirens accompanying them.

“Stop in the name of the law!” someone yelled from a bullhorn. They weren’t yelling at the monster who was kidnapping Kim, though. They were yelling at her.

Petrified by indecision, by the voice in her head which told her that of  _ course _ she should listen to the police, she found herself frozen.

Just then, a hand grabbed her by the wrist and started running with her, away from the police, across the Seine. Chat Noir.

“Go!” he yelled.

Her feet couldn’t keep up with her body, but she stumbled onward, prepared to fall at any moment. They got away quickly, though, propelled by their superpowers. Across the bridge and into an alley.

“What happened?” Chat asked, his voice filled with concern. Ladybug just squeezed her eyes tight, her head pointed toward the ground.

“I can’t. I can’t do this. It goes against everything I’ve ever known, and I don’t know who’s right and even if I did I can’t do this, I’m not right for it.” She covered her eyes with her hands, certain she was ready to cry.

Chat Noir stepped up to her, carefully putting his hands around her wrists and pulling her arms down. She tilted her head up to look him in the eye—the cat-eye pupils were wide, the skin crinkling in a smile.

“I know it’s scary,” he said, his voice soft, only loud enough for her to hear. “But if we do nothing, the bad guy wins, doesn’t matter who that is.”

“All that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing,” she whispered. His eyebrows knitted together.

“I—Majestia said it.” The day before, Alya said the quote to her—she’d been talking about Chloe, but the difference seemed arbitrary at this point.

Chat let go of her wrists, stepping toward the exit of the alley.

“Are you ready, Milady?” he asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”


	4. Chapter 4

When they finished the fight, Marinette went back to school before detransforming—she couldn’t look suspicious.

Evidently, though, most people had gone pretty far away from the school—she was the only one back in the cafeteria.

Well, almost the only one.

“Are you okay?” someone asked from behind her. She looked to see Adrien. “I—I haven’t seen you in a little while. You didn’t get caught in the attack, did you?”

She looked into his green eyes, the kindness familiar. Her judgments about him because of his father were wrong, and she knew that, but could she forgive him just like that? Wouldn’t it be suspicious, and besides, he’d still put gum on her seat, so what had he done to earn complete forgiveness?

“I’m fine,” she answered, refusing eye contact. 

He sighed. “We should get out of this building—there was a lot of damage done, we don’t know if the structure’s safe.”

She took a breath, but he was right. The building could crumble on them.

“Front exit or back exit?” she asked.

“Uh—you choose.”

She started walking toward the front exit, even though that’s where most of the rubble was concentrated. It was closer to the street and her home.

They walked silently, Marinette leading. It felt odd and the air felt stale, still. Everyone who’d been in the building abandoned it.

Outside, there were flashing blue lights. More police.

Part of her wanted to cringe away, but she wasn’t a wanted criminal— _ Ladybug _ was. And no one knew she was Ladybug.

As she and Adrien exited the building, people came rushing up to them, Miss Bustier among them.

“Marinette, Adrien,” she said, a little out of breath. “I’m so glad you’re okay?”

“Is everyone else okay?”

“Yes, you two were the last unaccounted for.”

_ Probably because I was saving you _ , she thought, but she didn’t say it, she couldn’t say it.

“Come over and join the class over here,” she said. “You can call your parents over here.”

Marinette glanced to Adrien, thinking of what he said to Ladybug. He didn’t trust Hawk Moth—he didn’t trust his own father.

His face fell and he looked to the ground when Miss Bustier said that, but followed along with them.

They reached the class standing in a group on the sidewalk. Immediately, Alya pulled Marinette away into the street, which was currently taped off as a crime scene.

“Girl, where were you? We saw Ladybug make a speech! I got it on video if you want to see it!”

“I—I hid in the bathroom,” she lied. “Figured it was safer than getting out of the building.”

Alya looked like she was about to say something, but then a car pulled up to them, forcing them out of the way.

“What the—” Alya was about to scream at the driver, but then Adrien passed by, opening up the door.

He turned to them as he was about to sit down. “Sorry,” he said.

Alya rolled her eyes. “Great. Daddy’s Boy is getting out of this just because his dad’s the mayor.”

The car started to roll away, but it quickly pulled into reverse and inched backward. Adrien’s window rolled down.

“Just so you know,” he said, “I was only trying to take the gun off the seat.”

Marinette grabbed Alya’s hand before she said anything. They both remained silent.

“Here,” he said, poking something out the window. “It looks like it’s gonna rain. Take this.”

She reached out for the umbrella, looking up at the sky. It was gray, the air thick.

“Thank you,” she said. “See you soon.”

Instead of responding, he smiled somberly as the window rolled back up.

A blush fell over her face.

“What’s up with you?” Alya asked. “Do you have a  _ cruuuush _ ?”

“Shut up!” Marinette said, but she couldn’t stop smiling.

Pushing up the umbrella to shield them from the sky, she moved back toward the group.

Another day, she might be willing to talk about Hawk Moth and Ladybug and Chat Noir.

For now, she wanted to think.

* * *

That night, Adrien spent time reading articles about the events of the day, trying to figure out what people thought of it all. Ladybug’s speech had been filmed and posted online, but it didn’t seem to make all that much of a difference.

_Ladybug and Chat Noir, Paris’s newest vigilantes, have officially gone head to head with Hawk Moth. Though no lives were harmed, they’re being charged with any property damage which occurred_ _as a result of the fight. This includes a lot of damage_ _done to local collège Dupont Academy._

As Adrien was reading, Nathalie and his father stepped into his room.

“What were you thinking?” his father asked.

Adrien began to fidget with his ring. “I know, I know—”

“You could have gotten hurt! This is serious!”

“Father, I—”

“You are  _ never _ going back to that school again,” he said, and Adrien’s head dropped in disappointment, but it was too soon. “—without your bodyguard.”

His head snapped back up. Was this real? Was he being allowed to go to school?

“Nathalie will have to organize your new schedule, of course. You’ll continue with all of your extracurricular lessons. I expect you to keep up with everything. But, you will be allowed to continue at Dupont.”

Had he not known it would be met with a scolding, Adrien would have stood up and hugged his father. Finally, he was being allowed to live a somewhat normal life!

“Thank you, Father,” he said, nearly buzzing in his chair.

And with a graceful bow of his head, he left the room.

Plagg came out from somewhere, a nuisance as always.

“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah. I can be excited for two things. Plagg, claws out.”

* * *

Ladybug and Chat Noir hid in the darkness of the night, everything between them mutually understood but unspoken. After all that happened today, they were on the same page, but to speak the page aloud felt like blasphemy—and most certainly it was pushing the freedom of speech in France.

“This’ll be an uphill battle,” he said, his voice muted. The air around them stayed still enough that no echoes breached the area. A clothesline was hung up on the top of the roof, shielding them from the street, and the building on the other side dwarfed the one they sat on.

“It will.” Not just against Hawk Moth, but a battle to gain the respect and support of the people of Paris. Mayor Agreste was quick to declare them an enemy, and what were they supposed to do against that? It was all a ploy by Hawk Moth—a strategy to declare them the enemy before they could do the same for him.

“Now’s the chance to duck out. We need to be in it together, or not at all.”

She glanced over at him, a subtle smile already sat on his lips. She couldn’t help but smile too—it was genuine, and kind, and born out of happiness, not hope.

Hope can be a great thing, but it gets tiring after a while. It occurs in spite of the bad, while happiness occurs because of the good—right now, that distinction meant everything.

“I’m in if you are,” she said, reaching out her hand in a fistbump. He pounded it and they held like that for a moment, smiling and making eye contact.

“You and me against the world,” she said.

“Well, not quite.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t see?” His smile grew wider as confusion passed over Ladybug’s face. “Someone made a blog in our support.”

“What?”

He looked away in thought for a moment, then got out his staff and typed something in. The screen popped up with a logo, in Ladybug’s red and black, that said  _ Ladyblog _ .

“Who did this?” she asked, grabbing his staff from him.

“I guess one of the students you saved earlier was inspired.” She could see his white teeth, his wide smile from the corner of her eye.

She scrolled through until she got to  _ About the Moderator _ .

“Alya Cesaire is an aspiring journalist and . . .”

Ladybug handed back her staff, a grin to match Chat’s now widening across her face.

“Still won’t be easy,” he said, “but maybe we’ll get some recognition.”

Ladybug thought back to Alya’s face as she gave the speech; she thought back to Adrien saying that he supports her, even if he couldn’t do it publicly. She thought of how Hawk Moth manipulated the mayor and the entire town into believing they were the enemy.

“Okay,” she said. “We have to make a promise.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “What about?”

“The people in this city think we’re supervillains. That’s not their fault. We can’t hold it against them, or even assume that any of them believe that, because clearly not all of them do. We have to promise, however ungrateful they may seem, that we protect them.”

His smile grew, his eyes crinkling at the corners—given, Ladybug couldn’t see them through his mask, but they were obvious. “You’re really committed to this, aren’t you?”

“You’re not?” she asked.

“No, I am,” he said. “I just . . . I know people who will support Hawk Moth. And I was worried that you’d be fighting in spite of them, not because of them.”

She looked him in the eyes. “I promise never to do that,” she said. “So long as you do too.”

He turned his body toward her. “Milady, not only do I promise not to fight in  _ spite _ of the people that we’re protecting, I  _ pinky _ promise.”

He held out his pinky. She smiled and hooked hers on it, shaking their hands.

“And remember,” he said, “if you break the promise, the pinky’s coming off.”

His face was almost scarily somber at first, shadows falling over his eyes. For just a moment she doubted that he was joking, and in the deepest of her doubt—a shallow creek of doubt perhaps—he cracked a smile.

“I got you!” he said.

“You did _ not _ .” She turned away, shoving his chest away softly, to which he responded by throwing himself to the side theatrically.

“Totally did.”

The conversation fizzled out between them, leaving a comfortable silence under a heavy night sky. Breeze left a chill in the air that didn’t quite reach the skin, given their magical supersuits. They stayed like that for a long time—an hour, maybe two.

“You’ll tell me if you’re ever feeling particularly pessimistic about what we’re doing, right?” he asked. “We only have each other.”

“Of course,” she said. “There’s no one else to go to. Not friends or family or whoever the elusive ‘Guardian’ is.”

“But you wouldn’t hide it from me, right? You’ll always tell me?”

Ladybug hesitated, picking up a pebble on the ground and examining it between her fingers. “Of course.”

Chat looked to her, drawing her gaze toward him with his warm smile. “Good,” he said. “Now, let’s get to bed. Tomorrow we’ll start the real work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this ENTIRE fic because I came up with the idea while listening to Warriors by Imagine Dragons (which is, by the way, the patron song of this fic) and wrote out the last scene and I wanted to make a plot for it that made sense.
> 
> I know I put this in a series but I'm making no promises that I'll continue the AU and if I do I probably won't finish it. I do want to write out more in it (the Alyno in this fic has SUCH potential for enemies to lovers angst and fluff, trust me) but I know myself well enough to know that long projects are not my vibe.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave a kudo


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